The Slow Unwind
Title: The Slow Unwind
Fandom: Maru, Yoko, Ryo + a cameo by Tacchon (Kanjani8)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Horror, AU
Word Count: 3,328
Summary: After the war, Maru and his friends are forced underground, where Maru continues his parents' work as a doctor while slowly succumbing to forces beyond his control.
Warnings: death, somewhat graphic violence, animals as violent (but not abused!)
Notes: Written for moogle_tey during je_squickfic 2011, originally posted here. Based on themes of biotech, dystopia, and fate. Much love to my beta, chelshock, for her sharp eye and keen insights that helped make this story what it is.
Maru's life had been dark since the war ended. The last real light he saw before he escaped underground was the distant embers of wreckage down his street, throughout his neighborhood. Wisps of grey smoke curled into the dawn air like extinguished candles on a birthday cake. It was as if the walls of his house had fallen around him in blazing triumph, not deafening loss. It was as if Maru's life hadn't been completely gutted right before his eyes.
The dogs had been treated better than the Em. The dogs had been trusted, if only because they knew their place. At least they knew they weren't human, the humans proclaimed. At least they knew they were animals. At least they didn't ask for rights when they deserved none. And even when the dog -- the beast -- had made quick work of Maru's mother, when it had advanced on Maru with tattered chunks of flesh and apron between its teeth, when it had torn across Maru's face with bloodied claws... even then, it had been acceptable. It knew it wasn't human, so it wasn't a real threat.
Not like the Em.
The humans had called it a war, a battle in the name of righteousness, for the sake of the race who had built the land and who deserved to rule it. But in reality, it had been a massacre. The Em weren't allowed to touch the humans, after all. They were physically unable to. Pacifism toward humans had been the condition they'd insisted upon to allow the initial Em research to occur. And like fools, the scientists agreed, for the sake of the future, to help those who'd fallen outside of the government's care to hope for a future without sickness and poverty. It had been the noble thing to do, in Maru's estimation. Trusting humans had been very noble, and very stupid. They were all human once upon a time; they knew exactly what they were capable of.
Maru was fast, with his Em legs. He and his friends ran from the destruction, ran from the sights and sounds and smells that twisted at his insides, shook his soul almost completely out of his body. Only parts of who he was had remained intact by the time they made it to the hidden entrance to the underground. Maru looked back one last time and saw the pieces there in the rubble -- his laughter, his happiness, his hope, his worries, his frustrations, every last bit of emotion in him, all lain to waste like garbage to be picked up when the sun rose.
The main underground chamber was filled with echoing wails and reeking of an indiscernable rotten stench. It was dark, so dark. Maru licked at his lips and nearly threw up. Shaking, he grasped desperately at Yoko's hands, leaned into Ryo's arm around his shoulders as they lowered him to a sitting position on the ground. Maru was numb to everything. His senses were failing him. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't smell or taste or feel. He couldn't even cry.
.
Maru became the resident doctor underground, treating Em as they trailed in from above ground, battered and broken and so close to hopeless. His parents had been some of the pioneers of Em research, so he'd watched from an early age as they used biotechnology to set broken bones and occasionally reconstruct limbs when disease had gone too far. It was a bit like a puzzle, he'd decided, putting pieces together and getting everything to fit properly. Sometimes standard pieces wouldn't fit, and sometimes the puzzles were more difficult than the ones he'd been used to seeing, but he was all they had, and it was easier for him to approach the bodies as puzzles than to see them as they really were: maimed remnants of violence and corruption, evidence of a world that had rejected them before they'd been able to run from it. It was already dark underground, and he didn't need thoughts like those making things murkier for him.
Maru operated from his room, a shell of a space that was probably bigger than it felt, though it wasn't as if he could tell, since everything in the close quarters of the underground made him feel claustrophobic. It was like trying to walk in an elevator full of people. Even when he looked through the dim lighting and thought he'd be able to move, he'd turn and walk straight into someone he didn't realize was there, another lost soul trying to live his life in a place they never wanted to call home.
The underground civilization was crude at best. Even with the technology they had in their bodies, there was only so much they could do without the resources they'd been so used to above ground. Even when the government was corrupt and so few people had access to everything they needed, at least there was still sunlight, and fresh air, and places to work and breathe and grow. Crops were meager, and more complex needs were met due to the kindness of the daily commuters, the Em who put their lives at risk to make the scraggly survivors feel like they were part of a community. Yoko was able to keep his job above ground as a radio announcer, since passing as fully human wasn't difficult when his only Em limb was a finger after a wrestling match gone awry. And Ryo stayed underground to help out at the daycare there, where he could play with kids and eat their food all he wanted.
It wasn't ideal, exactly. It hadn't been ideal before the war, but it was even worse now. But at least they still had two of them hidden within the rungs of political power, two people who might, if they were careful enough, be able to make a difference from the inside. One of these days.
But Maru wasn't about to hold his breath.
.
"So how is it?" Ryo asked as Yoko trudged into Maru's room the first night after the war had ended.
Yoko sighed. "It's not good," he said. There was a pause in his observations as he stepped around the room a little, eventually settling on the chair between Ryo's perch on the bed and Maru's own chair at his desk. The choices weren't exactly endless, so the only decision that had really been made was that of sitting by himself rather than sharing a space with Ryo. "The rations are even worse now than they were before the war, since the bigwigs now have the option of blaming the war for a shortage in basic supplies."
Ryo scoffed, splaying his legs across the bed with a th-thump.
"Everyone's working long hours for little pay, all in the name of paying their dues after the war on the Em. The government's got me and the other radio announcers doing these propaganda recordings about how to rebuild, how the point system works, why the laws are changing, things like that. Why am I the one who has to spread that kind of bullshit?"
"Sounds rough," Ryo said to himself, hands swishing back and forth across the bedsheets. Maru could practically feel Yoko's lips pouting.
"Now, now," Maru said with a smile, tilting the room out of indignance. "Can you explain the point system to me?"
Yoko made a defeated noise before he mumbled in monotone what was perhaps the twentieth take on how the point system worked: spot limbs that look like they might be made with Em technology, report the suspected Em to the authorities, get points, save up points to buy more rations. "It's an easy way for the government to keep eyes on the ground at all times and to scare the Em into hiding," he finished, "though that bit isn't part of the official explanation."
Ryo shifted on the bed. "So basically, everyone is miserable, and the only way to be less miserable is to make the Em miserable."
"Correct!" Yoko chimed with exaggerated enthusiasm.
Maru laughed, sneaking his arm toward Yoko and patting him on the shoulder once before gripping it firmly. "Let me pour you a drink."
.
It seemed that Yoko spent a lot of time frustrated with his job. That night, like many nights, he slammed Maru's door open and shut again, sweeping across the room toward the bed and shooing Ryo to one side to give him enough space to flop into it.
"You really aren't happy above ground, are you?" Maru said with a frown, though he knew what Yoko's answer would be. It was the same every time.
Yoko clicked his tongue, grumbling face-first into the sheets. "No one's happy above ground."
Ryo leaned past Yoko's vacant chair, making the springs of the bed creak as he dragged the bottle of scotch across Maru's desk. He let it slide all the way off the desk and expertly unscrewed the cap. "Drinks in Maru's room have become a regular thing, haven't they?"
Maru reached for the glasses.
.
Rumor had it that there was a resistance movement forming above ground. Humans sympathetic to the Em had banded together and were trying to find ways to protect the Em. There was no way for them to know how many Em were still above ground (and even the Em below ground had no real idea, since records of the Em operations had gone up in flames with the rest of Maru's life). But they were hopeful, it seemed, and optimistic that they could make a difference.
Maru furrowed his brow and his patient hissed in pain. Maru realized he'd missed his mark and apologized for being distracted by his thoughts. He guided the last screw in place and tightened it, saying conversationally, "The humans are really naive, aren't they? Sweet, but naive."
Maru's patient laughed a high, wheezing laugh, one that reminded him of what she'd gone in to his parents' office for initially, all those years ago: a broken hip. Maru almost envied how soon she was set to die. "At least their hearts are in the right place, Ryuhei."
Maru nodded. Positive energy went a long way, and he was grateful to know that it was out there somewhere. "Now stay still while I stitch up your elbow. The anesthetic won't last forever, so let me be quick and send you out of here before your voice starts to sound even more beautiful. You don't want someone as young as me falling in love with you."
Maru's patient giggled high and soft, delighted. "You're such a good boy, aren't you?"
Maru tried, at least.
.
Ryo was killed above ground. He'd gone chasing after some of the daycare kids who decided to be daring and go exploring where they absolutely shouldn't have been -- they'd escaped through the entrance to the underground, run this way and that in the sunshine they hadn't known for months. Apparently Ryo had caught them not long after they went missing, but not before they'd been spotted and reported. Some of the kids were easy to identify with their too-smooth gait, and Ryo himself had an uncovered wrist, a work in progress that had only had one more procedure before it would have been finished off completely. The chrome tendons must have been like a lavish meal for the humans to feed on, the highest caliber of vicious Em to turn in to the authorities.
As far as the humans were concerned, the Em weren't people. Ryo wasn't Ryo, and the children weren't children -- they were points.
For the Em, though... for Ryo, and for the children, being caught above ground was like the final stroke at "the end", no matter how short their stories had been.
Yoko didn't specify how they'd been killed, but Maru could tell by the way his voice dropped away that it had been the dogs' doing. It was a shame, really. Maru had liked dogs up until the war.
"Should we drink?" Maru said, his voice sounding brighter than he felt, brighter than the room could ever be without Ryo.
Yoko hummed in approval. "Actually, yeah. I'd really like one right now."
"We'll have to drink extra for Ryo-chan," Maru suggested.
"I got it, I got it." Yoko poured extravagantly, the liquid slopping into the glass for twice as long as it usually did. "Tonight we won't feel anything."
As always, Maru waited for Yoko to come to him. "To Dokkun and the kids," Yoko toasted, their glasses coming together with a clink.
.
Maru started crying when his next patient ended up being one of the daycare kids -- one of the ones who hadn't made the daring escape to see the sunshine, one of the few left underground. He tried to tell himself that he was empathizing with the girl's pain from where she'd innocently scraped her knee, but he knew that he was more susceptible to his own feelings than that. The frustration, hurt, loss, emptiness... it had all caught up to him.
"Tell me what happened," Maru said, fighting to keep his voice level for her. He listened to the girl's tale with his eyes on her face, nodding from time to time as he felt for a bandage that might be the appropriate size. It would be easier for both of them not to cry if they maintained eye contact.
"Here, this'll work, right?"
The girl sniffled a little.
"Good." Maru barely kept his own sniffles in. "Now lift up your knee for me so that I can put it right on."
.
"It really sucks up there," Yoko said as he often did, bursting into Maru's room that night. His footsteps sounded tired as he made it to his seat in three slow strides, the legs of the chair clattering against the floor. And then he was silent, silent for a long time, and Maru knew to let Yoko have his silence. All he did in his job was speak, pretend to be excited and interested in what was happening, in advancing the interests of a corrupt government and the human cause. Maru liked the days when Yoko said nothing at all, because it reminded him that that was Yoko's default, the side of Yoko that the humans upstairs weren't privileged enough to see.
Maybe there was an etilism in Maru's relationship with the humans. That was what the humans were scared of, right? But it wasn't anything about power or status or physical differences between his body and theirs. It was something much more real and personal. Because no one who came into Maru's room ever had to pretend.
"Do you have any moments of happiness?" Any at all? It was a question he asked now and then, full of empty hope that the response would change for the better.
Yoko's answer was as honest as his silence. "I don't know what that feels like anymore."
.
Yoko had been given a new assignment of listing out names of humans known to be sympathetic to the resistance movement. It was a way to discourage humans from joining in, and the humans who were listed always ended up facing the kind of discrimination that the Em had faced when they were openly living above ground, before the war.
"I get the sickest feeling every time I sit down in front of that microphone," Yoko said, his words muffled into his drink. His fingernail tapped against the glass restlessly. "Every day is worse than the last."
Maru nodded his head. He didn't know what to say.
"I just want it all to end."
.
"Life's bad here, Yuuchin." It was Maru's turn to feel mournful.
Yoko grunted in acknowledgment.
"Every morning I wake up, and I open my eyes to darkness." Maru ran his finger idly across his thigh.
"Don't be so dramatic. That's what happens when you're blind," Yoko said coldly.
Maru grinned. "You're awful!"
Yoko chuckled. "I know what you mean, though. Things aren't good anywhere. Even the humans who aren't suspected of resistance sympathy aren't doing well." The suffering of the Em could obviously be left unsaid. "I mean, what do you think? You don't really expect anything to come of a resistance movement, do you?"
Maru said nothing.
Yoko made a noise that sounded smug and resigned at the same time. "I couldn't agree more."
.
The next person who came through Maru's door was a stranger. He sounded tall, with where his voice was coming from, and short of breath. "Are you Maruyama-san? Can you operate on my shoulder?"
The man's name was Ohkura, and he was a human who'd been found out as being part of the resistance. His first love was an Em who'd been killed in the war, and he'd decided to pledge his life to the resistance movement. "Or at least what's left of it."
"What's that?" Maru asked calmly, pushing the needle forward until it connected with more skin.
"Yokoyama sold us out. He told the military where the entrance to the underground is. They should be here by the end of the day."
Maru paused for the briefest of moments before he continued with the operation, sewing the rest of Ohkura's shoulder together. He tried to keep his voice level as he spoke, but as well as he knew what Yoko was thinking, as easily as he'd figured out what Yoko had planned for later that day, a shock was still a shock. "So why are you getting your shoulder reconstructed if you only have till the end of the day?" If they only had till the end of the day. Them, everyone, all of the Em and the resistance underground.
Ohkura giggled embarrassedly, and Maru wished he could see his smile. It must have been so bright at that moment, when everything else was so dark. "I want to look nice when I see Yumiko again."
.
"Do me a favor, Maru?" Yoko said as he walked into the room. Maru knew exactly what he was going to ask for. Maru poured Yoko a drink, waiting for him to land in his seat before he offered the glass. Their fingers brushed together as Yoko took it, downing the drink in one gulp and slamming the glass on the table energetically. It seemed so optimistic, somehow, or maybe just relieved, and the refreshed sigh he gave sounded as if it were anything but his last.
Maru drew his fingers across the handle of the knife in front of him, the one he usually used to operate on injured Em, the one he'd used to just hours before to make Ohkura the Em he wanted to be before he saw his first love again.
Maru just wanted Yoko to be happy. He'd spent his time underground working to make everyone happy, to make their lives better any way he could, but it wasn't going to happen with the human regime the way it was, with how they were set to file in and destroy them as they had once before. Happiness just wasn't a reality that was happening in anyone's lifetime, and certainly not in theirs. It was something they understood almost as well as they understood each other, something they both had to act on, for everyone's sake.
Taking in a deep breath, Maru gripped the handle firmly in his palm and turned toward Yoko. "I love you, Yuuchin." He reached out, pressing his hand across Yoko's hair, face, until he found his jugular. Yoko's pulse tapped quickly beneath his skin.
"Ahh, I don't want to die," Yoko whined, the ghost of a nervous smirk shaking through his voice. "I haven't even thought of what my final words should be."
"Just tell me you love me, too," Maru said easily, affectionately.
"I love you, too, Maru." He sounded so sincere.
Maru smiled.
Fandom: Maru, Yoko, Ryo + a cameo by Tacchon (Kanjani8)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Horror, AU
Word Count: 3,328
Summary: After the war, Maru and his friends are forced underground, where Maru continues his parents' work as a doctor while slowly succumbing to forces beyond his control.
Warnings: death, somewhat graphic violence, animals as violent (but not abused!)
Notes: Written for moogle_tey during je_squickfic 2011, originally posted here. Based on themes of biotech, dystopia, and fate. Much love to my beta, chelshock, for her sharp eye and keen insights that helped make this story what it is.
Maru's life had been dark since the war ended. The last real light he saw before he escaped underground was the distant embers of wreckage down his street, throughout his neighborhood. Wisps of grey smoke curled into the dawn air like extinguished candles on a birthday cake. It was as if the walls of his house had fallen around him in blazing triumph, not deafening loss. It was as if Maru's life hadn't been completely gutted right before his eyes.
The dogs had been treated better than the Em. The dogs had been trusted, if only because they knew their place. At least they knew they weren't human, the humans proclaimed. At least they knew they were animals. At least they didn't ask for rights when they deserved none. And even when the dog -- the beast -- had made quick work of Maru's mother, when it had advanced on Maru with tattered chunks of flesh and apron between its teeth, when it had torn across Maru's face with bloodied claws... even then, it had been acceptable. It knew it wasn't human, so it wasn't a real threat.
Not like the Em.
The humans had called it a war, a battle in the name of righteousness, for the sake of the race who had built the land and who deserved to rule it. But in reality, it had been a massacre. The Em weren't allowed to touch the humans, after all. They were physically unable to. Pacifism toward humans had been the condition they'd insisted upon to allow the initial Em research to occur. And like fools, the scientists agreed, for the sake of the future, to help those who'd fallen outside of the government's care to hope for a future without sickness and poverty. It had been the noble thing to do, in Maru's estimation. Trusting humans had been very noble, and very stupid. They were all human once upon a time; they knew exactly what they were capable of.
Maru was fast, with his Em legs. He and his friends ran from the destruction, ran from the sights and sounds and smells that twisted at his insides, shook his soul almost completely out of his body. Only parts of who he was had remained intact by the time they made it to the hidden entrance to the underground. Maru looked back one last time and saw the pieces there in the rubble -- his laughter, his happiness, his hope, his worries, his frustrations, every last bit of emotion in him, all lain to waste like garbage to be picked up when the sun rose.
The main underground chamber was filled with echoing wails and reeking of an indiscernable rotten stench. It was dark, so dark. Maru licked at his lips and nearly threw up. Shaking, he grasped desperately at Yoko's hands, leaned into Ryo's arm around his shoulders as they lowered him to a sitting position on the ground. Maru was numb to everything. His senses were failing him. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't smell or taste or feel. He couldn't even cry.
.
Maru became the resident doctor underground, treating Em as they trailed in from above ground, battered and broken and so close to hopeless. His parents had been some of the pioneers of Em research, so he'd watched from an early age as they used biotechnology to set broken bones and occasionally reconstruct limbs when disease had gone too far. It was a bit like a puzzle, he'd decided, putting pieces together and getting everything to fit properly. Sometimes standard pieces wouldn't fit, and sometimes the puzzles were more difficult than the ones he'd been used to seeing, but he was all they had, and it was easier for him to approach the bodies as puzzles than to see them as they really were: maimed remnants of violence and corruption, evidence of a world that had rejected them before they'd been able to run from it. It was already dark underground, and he didn't need thoughts like those making things murkier for him.
Maru operated from his room, a shell of a space that was probably bigger than it felt, though it wasn't as if he could tell, since everything in the close quarters of the underground made him feel claustrophobic. It was like trying to walk in an elevator full of people. Even when he looked through the dim lighting and thought he'd be able to move, he'd turn and walk straight into someone he didn't realize was there, another lost soul trying to live his life in a place they never wanted to call home.
The underground civilization was crude at best. Even with the technology they had in their bodies, there was only so much they could do without the resources they'd been so used to above ground. Even when the government was corrupt and so few people had access to everything they needed, at least there was still sunlight, and fresh air, and places to work and breathe and grow. Crops were meager, and more complex needs were met due to the kindness of the daily commuters, the Em who put their lives at risk to make the scraggly survivors feel like they were part of a community. Yoko was able to keep his job above ground as a radio announcer, since passing as fully human wasn't difficult when his only Em limb was a finger after a wrestling match gone awry. And Ryo stayed underground to help out at the daycare there, where he could play with kids and eat their food all he wanted.
It wasn't ideal, exactly. It hadn't been ideal before the war, but it was even worse now. But at least they still had two of them hidden within the rungs of political power, two people who might, if they were careful enough, be able to make a difference from the inside. One of these days.
But Maru wasn't about to hold his breath.
.
"So how is it?" Ryo asked as Yoko trudged into Maru's room the first night after the war had ended.
Yoko sighed. "It's not good," he said. There was a pause in his observations as he stepped around the room a little, eventually settling on the chair between Ryo's perch on the bed and Maru's own chair at his desk. The choices weren't exactly endless, so the only decision that had really been made was that of sitting by himself rather than sharing a space with Ryo. "The rations are even worse now than they were before the war, since the bigwigs now have the option of blaming the war for a shortage in basic supplies."
Ryo scoffed, splaying his legs across the bed with a th-thump.
"Everyone's working long hours for little pay, all in the name of paying their dues after the war on the Em. The government's got me and the other radio announcers doing these propaganda recordings about how to rebuild, how the point system works, why the laws are changing, things like that. Why am I the one who has to spread that kind of bullshit?"
"Sounds rough," Ryo said to himself, hands swishing back and forth across the bedsheets. Maru could practically feel Yoko's lips pouting.
"Now, now," Maru said with a smile, tilting the room out of indignance. "Can you explain the point system to me?"
Yoko made a defeated noise before he mumbled in monotone what was perhaps the twentieth take on how the point system worked: spot limbs that look like they might be made with Em technology, report the suspected Em to the authorities, get points, save up points to buy more rations. "It's an easy way for the government to keep eyes on the ground at all times and to scare the Em into hiding," he finished, "though that bit isn't part of the official explanation."
Ryo shifted on the bed. "So basically, everyone is miserable, and the only way to be less miserable is to make the Em miserable."
"Correct!" Yoko chimed with exaggerated enthusiasm.
Maru laughed, sneaking his arm toward Yoko and patting him on the shoulder once before gripping it firmly. "Let me pour you a drink."
.
It seemed that Yoko spent a lot of time frustrated with his job. That night, like many nights, he slammed Maru's door open and shut again, sweeping across the room toward the bed and shooing Ryo to one side to give him enough space to flop into it.
"You really aren't happy above ground, are you?" Maru said with a frown, though he knew what Yoko's answer would be. It was the same every time.
Yoko clicked his tongue, grumbling face-first into the sheets. "No one's happy above ground."
Ryo leaned past Yoko's vacant chair, making the springs of the bed creak as he dragged the bottle of scotch across Maru's desk. He let it slide all the way off the desk and expertly unscrewed the cap. "Drinks in Maru's room have become a regular thing, haven't they?"
Maru reached for the glasses.
.
Rumor had it that there was a resistance movement forming above ground. Humans sympathetic to the Em had banded together and were trying to find ways to protect the Em. There was no way for them to know how many Em were still above ground (and even the Em below ground had no real idea, since records of the Em operations had gone up in flames with the rest of Maru's life). But they were hopeful, it seemed, and optimistic that they could make a difference.
Maru furrowed his brow and his patient hissed in pain. Maru realized he'd missed his mark and apologized for being distracted by his thoughts. He guided the last screw in place and tightened it, saying conversationally, "The humans are really naive, aren't they? Sweet, but naive."
Maru's patient laughed a high, wheezing laugh, one that reminded him of what she'd gone in to his parents' office for initially, all those years ago: a broken hip. Maru almost envied how soon she was set to die. "At least their hearts are in the right place, Ryuhei."
Maru nodded. Positive energy went a long way, and he was grateful to know that it was out there somewhere. "Now stay still while I stitch up your elbow. The anesthetic won't last forever, so let me be quick and send you out of here before your voice starts to sound even more beautiful. You don't want someone as young as me falling in love with you."
Maru's patient giggled high and soft, delighted. "You're such a good boy, aren't you?"
Maru tried, at least.
.
Ryo was killed above ground. He'd gone chasing after some of the daycare kids who decided to be daring and go exploring where they absolutely shouldn't have been -- they'd escaped through the entrance to the underground, run this way and that in the sunshine they hadn't known for months. Apparently Ryo had caught them not long after they went missing, but not before they'd been spotted and reported. Some of the kids were easy to identify with their too-smooth gait, and Ryo himself had an uncovered wrist, a work in progress that had only had one more procedure before it would have been finished off completely. The chrome tendons must have been like a lavish meal for the humans to feed on, the highest caliber of vicious Em to turn in to the authorities.
As far as the humans were concerned, the Em weren't people. Ryo wasn't Ryo, and the children weren't children -- they were points.
For the Em, though... for Ryo, and for the children, being caught above ground was like the final stroke at "the end", no matter how short their stories had been.
Yoko didn't specify how they'd been killed, but Maru could tell by the way his voice dropped away that it had been the dogs' doing. It was a shame, really. Maru had liked dogs up until the war.
"Should we drink?" Maru said, his voice sounding brighter than he felt, brighter than the room could ever be without Ryo.
Yoko hummed in approval. "Actually, yeah. I'd really like one right now."
"We'll have to drink extra for Ryo-chan," Maru suggested.
"I got it, I got it." Yoko poured extravagantly, the liquid slopping into the glass for twice as long as it usually did. "Tonight we won't feel anything."
As always, Maru waited for Yoko to come to him. "To Dokkun and the kids," Yoko toasted, their glasses coming together with a clink.
.
Maru started crying when his next patient ended up being one of the daycare kids -- one of the ones who hadn't made the daring escape to see the sunshine, one of the few left underground. He tried to tell himself that he was empathizing with the girl's pain from where she'd innocently scraped her knee, but he knew that he was more susceptible to his own feelings than that. The frustration, hurt, loss, emptiness... it had all caught up to him.
"Tell me what happened," Maru said, fighting to keep his voice level for her. He listened to the girl's tale with his eyes on her face, nodding from time to time as he felt for a bandage that might be the appropriate size. It would be easier for both of them not to cry if they maintained eye contact.
"Here, this'll work, right?"
The girl sniffled a little.
"Good." Maru barely kept his own sniffles in. "Now lift up your knee for me so that I can put it right on."
.
"It really sucks up there," Yoko said as he often did, bursting into Maru's room that night. His footsteps sounded tired as he made it to his seat in three slow strides, the legs of the chair clattering against the floor. And then he was silent, silent for a long time, and Maru knew to let Yoko have his silence. All he did in his job was speak, pretend to be excited and interested in what was happening, in advancing the interests of a corrupt government and the human cause. Maru liked the days when Yoko said nothing at all, because it reminded him that that was Yoko's default, the side of Yoko that the humans upstairs weren't privileged enough to see.
Maybe there was an etilism in Maru's relationship with the humans. That was what the humans were scared of, right? But it wasn't anything about power or status or physical differences between his body and theirs. It was something much more real and personal. Because no one who came into Maru's room ever had to pretend.
"Do you have any moments of happiness?" Any at all? It was a question he asked now and then, full of empty hope that the response would change for the better.
Yoko's answer was as honest as his silence. "I don't know what that feels like anymore."
.
Yoko had been given a new assignment of listing out names of humans known to be sympathetic to the resistance movement. It was a way to discourage humans from joining in, and the humans who were listed always ended up facing the kind of discrimination that the Em had faced when they were openly living above ground, before the war.
"I get the sickest feeling every time I sit down in front of that microphone," Yoko said, his words muffled into his drink. His fingernail tapped against the glass restlessly. "Every day is worse than the last."
Maru nodded his head. He didn't know what to say.
"I just want it all to end."
.
"Life's bad here, Yuuchin." It was Maru's turn to feel mournful.
Yoko grunted in acknowledgment.
"Every morning I wake up, and I open my eyes to darkness." Maru ran his finger idly across his thigh.
"Don't be so dramatic. That's what happens when you're blind," Yoko said coldly.
Maru grinned. "You're awful!"
Yoko chuckled. "I know what you mean, though. Things aren't good anywhere. Even the humans who aren't suspected of resistance sympathy aren't doing well." The suffering of the Em could obviously be left unsaid. "I mean, what do you think? You don't really expect anything to come of a resistance movement, do you?"
Maru said nothing.
Yoko made a noise that sounded smug and resigned at the same time. "I couldn't agree more."
.
The next person who came through Maru's door was a stranger. He sounded tall, with where his voice was coming from, and short of breath. "Are you Maruyama-san? Can you operate on my shoulder?"
The man's name was Ohkura, and he was a human who'd been found out as being part of the resistance. His first love was an Em who'd been killed in the war, and he'd decided to pledge his life to the resistance movement. "Or at least what's left of it."
"What's that?" Maru asked calmly, pushing the needle forward until it connected with more skin.
"Yokoyama sold us out. He told the military where the entrance to the underground is. They should be here by the end of the day."
Maru paused for the briefest of moments before he continued with the operation, sewing the rest of Ohkura's shoulder together. He tried to keep his voice level as he spoke, but as well as he knew what Yoko was thinking, as easily as he'd figured out what Yoko had planned for later that day, a shock was still a shock. "So why are you getting your shoulder reconstructed if you only have till the end of the day?" If they only had till the end of the day. Them, everyone, all of the Em and the resistance underground.
Ohkura giggled embarrassedly, and Maru wished he could see his smile. It must have been so bright at that moment, when everything else was so dark. "I want to look nice when I see Yumiko again."
.
"Do me a favor, Maru?" Yoko said as he walked into the room. Maru knew exactly what he was going to ask for. Maru poured Yoko a drink, waiting for him to land in his seat before he offered the glass. Their fingers brushed together as Yoko took it, downing the drink in one gulp and slamming the glass on the table energetically. It seemed so optimistic, somehow, or maybe just relieved, and the refreshed sigh he gave sounded as if it were anything but his last.
Maru drew his fingers across the handle of the knife in front of him, the one he usually used to operate on injured Em, the one he'd used to just hours before to make Ohkura the Em he wanted to be before he saw his first love again.
Maru just wanted Yoko to be happy. He'd spent his time underground working to make everyone happy, to make their lives better any way he could, but it wasn't going to happen with the human regime the way it was, with how they were set to file in and destroy them as they had once before. Happiness just wasn't a reality that was happening in anyone's lifetime, and certainly not in theirs. It was something they understood almost as well as they understood each other, something they both had to act on, for everyone's sake.
Taking in a deep breath, Maru gripped the handle firmly in his palm and turned toward Yoko. "I love you, Yuuchin." He reached out, pressing his hand across Yoko's hair, face, until he found his jugular. Yoko's pulse tapped quickly beneath his skin.
"Ahh, I don't want to die," Yoko whined, the ghost of a nervous smirk shaking through his voice. "I haven't even thought of what my final words should be."
"Just tell me you love me, too," Maru said easily, affectionately.
"I love you, too, Maru." He sounded so sincere.
Maru smiled.